Squatter

We have one and when I say squatter I mean it in both senses of the word.  Yes, this individual occupies our apartment and he neither, owns, rents or has otherwise lawful permission to use said apartment.

The second definition of squatter which this resident has great skill at is that he regularly unloads his bowels in my kitchen, on the breakfast bar and in various places across our white tiled floor.  By morning when us legal tenants have woken up I have the joy of scraping heated and dried poop off various areas of the apartment.

This war of attrition has been going on for three months now and as of this weekend I now feel like I am on the losing side and I need to remedy this by going on the offensive.

You are possibly wondering what foul tenant could possibly be doing something has grotesque as doing their toilet anywhere but the toilet.  Admittedly, I have a tendency to exaggerate so don't be concerned, we aren't living with heroin addicts.  I am dealing with an efficient predator, lightening quick and extremely agile.

I have a big gecko.

He lives under my fridge and he is the one who comes out each night to defecate all over my apartment and I have honestly had enough!

This all began in May after moving into our new old apartment which is not air tight and has lots of cracks, crannies and open areas whereby the tropical wildlife in all their variety can enter and find somewhere warm to settle.  Wikihow explains that geckos like warm places to live.  We live in bloody Singapore.  Why do they need the underneath of my fridge to keep warm?  30 degrees every day outside isn't enough? Huh?  Huh?  Huh?

Anyway, going back to May.  Shortly after we moved in my husband decided to meet a friend for a drink at our local bar.  About 30 minutes after he left I went to the fridge to make my sixteenth gin and tonic when something black and fast darted just by my foot and disappeared somewhere in the kitchen.  There was no question in my mind that it was a mouse.  Black, long tail, nippy.  I left the fridge door open, ran into the living room, stood on the sofa and phoned my husband.  Here is the FBI transcript of that conversation:

Me:  Help, you have to come home now. 
Him:  Why, what's happened?
Me:  You have to come home, there is a mouse in the apartment.  Come home now?
Him:  Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  I am not coming home.
Me:  Why are you laughing?  This is serious. I can't live here if there is a mouse.  We need to go back to the old apartment or back to England.
Him:  Hahahahahahahahaha.  Stop being silly.  We can't move back home.  I am having a drink with David.  Grow a pair and deal with it.  What do you want me to do anyway?
Me:  What good are you? 
Him:  Stop being silly.
Me:  Dial tone

Chivalry is dead people.  If this had been the 1500's he would have jumped on his horse, rode straight back home and within an hour that mouse's head would have been mounted on my wall.  

I blame the feminists.

I managed to go back into the kitchen with my eyes closed to shut the fridge door and then decided at 8pm to go to bed as it meant I could keep my feet off the floor and wasn't anywhere near the kitchen.  I then decided to message my friend to get some sympathy.  Here is the FBI transcript of that conversation.  It is redacted in compliance with NSA guidelines:

Me:  Jo.  There is a mouse.  I want to cry.  I have to move out.
Jo:  No way, not up there.  Where.  How?
Me: I don't understand.  We have only been here two weeks.  I can't live with a mouse. Snakes, geckos, spiders, roaches but not mice, not mice.
Jo:  My friends' hamster committed suicide off her balcony.  Your mouse might do the same.
Me: Don't make me laugh.  This is very serious.
Jo:  Are you sure it wasn't a cockroach in fancy dress.  It might have been a rat?  I did see pest control outside your apartment block earlier.
Me:  Wonderful!, I wrote to you for comfort.  Bloody Rob wouldn't even come back to help me.
Jo:  Seriously, what a meanie.  You might be eaten alive.  I can see it in The Straits Times.  Girl eaten alive by door mouse.
Me:  It is not funny.  It is serious.  I will need to be carried around the apartment so I don't have to put my feet down.
Jo:  Why don't you use the kids scooters then you might run it over while you are scooting.
Me:  "You have left the conversation".

Now in fairness I have never seen a mouse again in our kitchen but I did see a very big gecko under our fridge shortly after this incident. Which does make me think perhaps Jo was slightly right in that it was a gecko in a mouse costume. 

I don't really mind geckos.  They are handy, a bit like bees with their honey making.  Geckos eat mosquitoes and insects and will in theory keep our apartment free of that other annoying tropical killer, dengue fever.

I am quite happy to co-habit with geckos as long as they are passing through but not when they set up residence under my fridge and jump out at me on a regular basis and more importantly shit all over my apartment.  (I apologise for my fruity language but like I said, this is war).  I appreciate we are all animals and bowels need to be moved but did you know that gecko faeces contains salmonella.  Now you do not want that spread around your kitchen when you are making chocolate chip cookies.

Over the last few months I have spent every morning cleaning up gecko poo and on Saturday night it was the last straw.  Within minutes of turning the lights off and going to bed the big gecko under our fridge was out.  I know this because I forgot my phone in the living room so hurriedly ran back in and turned the lights on.  Within a split second I saw him on the wall and he quickly scurried behind the bookcase.  Within this second I also managed to step in a fresh poo which smeared across the tiles and remains stuck on my white flip flop.  That was it.  I was after blood.

In my desperation, at midnight on the same Saturday, I decided to turn to the Internet trolls otherwise known as the Singapore Psycho Wives / Singapore Expat Wives.  They have two Facebook forums.  One known as Singapore Expat Wives and the other the Real Singapore Expat Wives.  Basically the only difference is the Real Expat Wives are bitchier.  I decided to contact the Real group on Facebook as I had every intention on that night to kill the gecko and didn't want the limp wristed hippy do-gooders on Singapore Expat Wives telling me about God's creatures and blah blah blah.

What can I say?  There are a lot of expat women awake at midnight keen to discuss geckos and within half an hour I already had a variety of strategies.  Through a combination of Wikihow and advice from the ladies on the forum I had some super ideas.  The most stupid method was Wikihow's idea to hold a box near the gecko and "encourage it in".  This would work brilliantly if the gecko had no legs or was already dead.

There were a variety of humane methods suggested such as using egg shells, as the gecko sees them and thinks there is a predator nearby or spraying the area with chilli or pepper mixed with water.  Or placing onions or garlic around the gecko's neighbourhood.  Using such things would make us move out before the gecko.  And besides, I was not interested in removing him with ingredients for bolognese.

It seemed the most effective way of catching these creatures is with sticky glue paper.  There is something in the glue that attracts insects so when they get stuck the gecko wanders onto the paper too and also gets stuck.  Wikihow said it is an effective method but not terribly nice as if you don't check the papers regularly the gecko can get caught and then starve to death.  It did advise that you can remove the gecko by pouring vegetable oil on it and that loosens the adhesive from their feet.  So it is sort of humane with a little bit of torture as well.  I assume just to punish the gecko for its nerve.

I discussed this method with my unchivalrous husband.  He refused to help me with it as he thought it cruel.  The transcript as follows:

Me:  I think we should use these sticky glue pads.  Only way we will definitely catch it.  But I am squeamish so need your help to get it off the glue pad.
Him:  I am not doing it.  Imagine if it gets caught early in the night.  It will suffer until morning before we can let it go.  How would you like it if you got stuck on a sticky mat?  What would you do?
Me:  I dunno.  Wait till someone arrives with vegetable oil.  Besides when would I ever get stuck on a sticky mat?
Him:  Well, I wouldn't wait.  I would be so scared I would be wriggling and writhing and pooing myself in fear
Me:  Well, you did that on the last day of our holiday in Vietnam so what's the big deal?
Him:  I am not helping you
Me: What good are you?

I then Googled glue mats and the first thing that came up was an article by PETA entitled "How Glue Pads Ruined by Childhood" with an accompanying photo of a sticky mat with a mouse, two cockroaches and two sparrows stuck to it.  Admittedly I was rather sickened.

Yes yes, this is why I am not a vegetarian.  I like the meat but am not prepared to butcher it myself.  I want the vermin out of my house but am not prepared to pick up the mousetrap with the decapitated mouse in it myself.  I need (sorry to say it ladies) a man to do it for me.  And unfortunately I don't know any.

So, after all my shouting, swearing and posturing. I decided to go the namby pamby route.  I am trying the egg shells.  So much for wanting blood!

On Sunday however, we had a bit of good fortune. While talking to my Mum on Facetime I noticed a very big gecko scuttling along the wall heading back to the kitchen.  I dropped the phone thinking this is it, we are going to get that fridge dweller. Between the four of us we managed to catch him.  It did involve whacking him with a broom.  Chasing him around the floor and the walls and then finally my husband caught him in a Tupperware box.  I was still keen to throw him out of the window (21 floors) but my husband who is looking at me increasingly with doubt as to whether he did the right thing by marrying an axe murderer said he would put him outside in the grass.

Anyway, you cannot imagine the joy of knowing he was gone.  I still laid out the egg shells that night as a warning to any other interlopers and went to bed happy knowing I would not be scrubbing black poo off the kitchen surfaces.

I woke on Monday morning to find the egg shells carefully moved aside and three poos on the kitchen surfaces.

I have decided to get the sticky glue mats, as cruel as they are.  I did suggest to my husband that if we did catch one and you didn't have time to pour vegetable oil on it and carefully prise it off before you go to work, we could put the mat face down and I can drive over it with the car then at least its death will be quick and painful.  I don't want it to starve to death.  I am not a monster!

This whole experience has made me realise that I am unfortunately not a murderer as much as I really want to be.  I really want to kill that gecko but I just don't have the cojones to do it.  I am going to get the sticky mat and perhaps wait until my in-laws arrive in a few weeks.  They live in the English countryside so are used to equatorial geckos.  If we happen to catch one while they are here.  I will feign illness and stay in bed and they will get rid of it for me because they are nice.  Unfortunately, I think they read my blog so perhaps I shouldn't have said any of that.

Wow!  That was over 2000 words on my gecko.  Perhaps I should read him this blog post.  He might leave of his own accord.

Hamstrings

I have often thought the word hamstrings a rather odd term for a part of the human body and in all honesty it is only in the last two years that I am certain of what my hamstrings are and where they reside.

Generally I think we are disinterested in our bodies until something goes wrong with it.  For example, I paid little attention to my fallopian tubes until I got pregnant at the age of 32 (20 years after sex education at school).  After all, how often does one think about ones fallopian tubes.

Anyway, my hamstrings hurt.  They hurt very badly and seem to be getting worse.  This is somewhat embarrassing at Pilates given I am probably the only person there who has been doing it for four years plus and while all the other ladies are doing the splits on the reformer stretching their hamstrings, I am standing there like a human tipi stretching jack squat (NB. jack squats, something else I can't do without setting my legs on fire).

I don't understand why after so many years of this particular type of exercise I seem to be getting so much worse at the basics.  My instructor who is also a qualified physiotherapist advised me to do a particular type of stretch at home to loosen my hamstrings but my actual doctor on www.yahoomedicaladvicebyunqualifiedidiots.com said the best thing to do is rest the muscles, use ice packs and heat compresses and watch TV.

I am in a bit of a bind.  I don't want to be one of those people who stretch in public.  I am happy to do my stretches at home if it is going to help but given I am not stretching enough prior to exercise, I think I will have to do some stretching in view of other people.  I am sure this is pre-exercise basics but people who stretch in public are .. well .. wangs.

I think I am being punished for my recent spate of mean thoughts and as is the way with divine punishment it is always going to be a humiliation related to the mean thought thunk.

The children go to a lovely swim school on Sundays.  The teachers are excellent, great with the kids and the lessons are a cracking workout and lots of fun.  Furthermore, the teachers at the swim school are perhaps the only men I have ever seen who can carry off Speedo's and believe me, I very rarely say that.  Not that I am looking at their budgie smugglers, I just mean they are very tall and fit.

In case you have not guessed, tall, fit, friendly ... they are Dutch and the swim school is Dutch owned.  Up until now spending time at the swimming pool watching the kids has been a wonderful thing however over the last three weekends a chap has appeared every Sunday morning to conduct this kind of public stretching exhibitionism pool side in front of the kids in his speedos and even though he is Dutch, he is not tall and cannot carry off those tight trunks. 

The stretching itself as I said is right in front of my daughter's swim lanes and not far from the entrance to the pool where all traffic enters and exits.  He stands here with his legs in some sort of splits thing and then bends forward in his speedos so we get to see his meat and two veg from the front and back.  This goes on for a good ten minutes and is truly vomit inducing.  Frankly, I should really phone the police as I believe it is bordering on child abuse and most certainly retinal abuse.

I don't understand it.  There are plenty of places to stretch that are discreet.  I am sure I have mentioned in previous blogs the bizarre exercises that people in Singapore do in public however, I genuinely don't think they are doing this out of any sense of exhibitionism but simply because they don't care what anyone thinks and I do like that.  So, while I do walk past a variety of exercisers doing things like hopping arabesques, chicken head nodding, arm flapping and pelvic thrusting (all true), I think they believe they are getting a good workout even though they look like berks but it is all about the exercise and there is no element of showing off.

Therefore, as a westerner I find the behaviour by Mr Splits very peculiar.  

My husband and I discussed this in depth and I was trying to fathom this exhibitionism as it has to be bordering on a type of arrogance.  My husband being the type to never make broad brush statements about any particular nationality believes it is because he is Dutch and that is why he is arrogant. Of course like all good racists I should preface this with "some of our best friends are Dutch".  

I don't buy this as every Dutch person I have ever met has been lovely.  My husband agrees and only puts any display of arrogance down to the fact they are tall.  

I think I concur with this theory as I know if I was tall I would be a complete asshole.  The reason I am so self-depracating and diffident is because I can't reach most wall shelves.  Who would have the confidence to do public stretching when you have to ask a 12 year old at the supermarket to get you some bread.  But this Mr Dutch is not tall so I think he is just an exhibitionist.

We think he might actually be friends with the owner of the swim school so we unfortunately cannot kick him when he is bending over and my goodness, the temptation is overwhelming.  When you see a huge big black speedo bottom in the air and a poor little girl standing at head height with it, all you want to do is kick that sucker out of the park.

Our solution to this is to get our daughter to complain to her instructor that he is putting her off her butterfly but given she is a chicken she will not do it and we will have to put up with this fool for a further three weeks before we leave for the UK.

I don't really care what anyone thinks of me but I don't really want to be despised or get kicked in the bits by a stranger but maybe I am the minority here.  I am the only one too embarrassed to stretch in public and now I have busted hamstrings whereas everyone else in this country has no problem clucking like a chicken or having someone hit them in the face with a kettle ball in public if it means they do a good warm up prior to their real exercise.

Of course my hamstring problem could just be due to the fact I am going to be 40 this year and my body is increasingly readying itself for inevitable paralysis.  Either way, I had better get over it.

Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder

This blog post comes with a few warnings.

Firstly, I am using this post as therapy.  If there was ever a reason to press delete this is it.  Secondly, I am going to be complaining a lot and talking about movies a lot.  Again, no hard feelings if you decide to delete.  Third and finally this is going to be long as I have a lot of complaining to do, so either set aside your weekend or again, delete.

Nothing serious has happened.  I have just gone through a bit of a catalogue of minor setbacks that have grown into a monster in my head and have left me curled in a ball on the floor wondering why I can no longer feel my legs.  Anyway, all of this has led me to the conclusion that March has been rather crapola and the crapola has crept into April as well. 

Oh the difference a few months make, when last I was on my 26th post on the joys of New Zealand and now all I have for you is a list of moans, depression and insanity.

In order to be expeditious in this one way cyber therapy session I have decided to list my tales of woe:

1.  My 5 year old is prone to nose bleeds and because he is 5 does not realise bleeding on smooth wipe clean surfaces is generally the better option.  Instead, following getting hit in the face by his sister, decided last night to have a nose bleed all over my light blue fabric sofa.  I tried salt, soda water, Vanish to no avail and now the blood stains are even darker and around the blood stain the fabric has gone back to its original colour thereby highlighting how unbelievably filthy my sofa is normally.

2.  On our last holiday to Vietnam which was for the most part lovely we had three days of nonstop pouring rain.  Not drizzle, utter downpour.  As we were on holiday we had no choice but to grin and bear it and get out even though we were ill prepared clothes wise.  Ultimately a portion of our days were spent stuck in the hotel where I used the nice computer in the room to look into other holidays as this one sucked.

3.  After we left rainy Hue in Vietnam for Hoi An we had one day left and my husband said, look we need to go out with a bang on our last day to cheer ourselves up after all the peeing rain.  So we did go out with a bang.  He got salmonella poisoning on our last night, we had to extend our hotel room after check out because he was so sick and the kids and I spent our last day wandering aimlessly around the same streets we had wandered round aimlessly for four days before.

4. I don't know whether I sweated differently in Vietnam but something happened with my sunglasses that resulted in two big red angry spots developing on either side of the bridge of my nose right on top of the bone.  They were so painful I could not wear my glasses anymore and they were so large and red I could not even cover them up.  In terms of size and obviousness, think of Hellboy prior to being shackled by Rasputin and having his whomper stuck in that satanic hole that made his horns grow.

5.  My 8 year old has started shouting at me saying "ALRIGHT!.... FINE!" quite a lot and it makes me sad.

6.  The train in Vietnam from Hoi An to Hue ran over somebody.  The bump was so big it knocked our things off the table.  We were held for 45 minutes while random passers by and some of the train staff walked up and down the tracks, I assume trying to find the body.  All we saw was a wallet, a licence plate and two mismatched shoes collected in a heap following the walkabout.  No police, firemen or ambulance. We moved on after this.  I remember jumpers when I commuted to London and all of us complaining about the delays, inconvenience and selfishness.  I feel ashamed now.  I have to say I think that bump will always stay with me and there is still a part of me that hopes it was a sack of potatoes someone stupidly left on the track instead of a person.

On our return from Hue back to Hoi An the train stopped briefly for a moment and my 8 year old said rolling her eyes "Oh God, we haven't run someone over AGAIN have we?"  Speechless!

7. We are in the process of moving apartment and I am finding it all unbelievably stressful.  It has been made worse by the fact my dear husband has been away for two weeks and will be away for a further two to three weeks thereby absolving himself of all responsibility in the flat hunt and management of this move.  It really isn't is fault but I am peeved so I am going to blame him.

Furthermore, the way things work here with property is just bizarre. 

I looked forward to coming abroad to understand a different culture and different ways of doing things but honestly I don't know what's the matter with these bloody people.  Okay, I take that back.  There is nothing wrong with the way things are done here.  It is just different and unfortunately I am too old and crusty now to not let myself get drawn into being annoyed or frustrated.  I won't bore you with this fortnight of stress whereby we have had to pull out of a deal and then start looking for alternative apartments to find there is only one other available in the development that we like.  We have to be out of our apartment in just under a month and given we can potentially save half of our monthly rent by leaving we have no choice but to move.

I wish I could get past the apparent lack of haste here.  My very good agent said she has dealt with landlords who have actually forgotten they owned an apartment because they have so many.  This is what I am dealing with ladies and gentlemen.  It truly is another world! 

I miss the UK on this score as we have a very sensible approach to home purchase or rental.  Purchasing is particularly good.  You go and see a house once. Put in an offer of hundreds of thousands of pounds having only seen it once.  I mean, you don't need to see anything more than once when you are making the biggest investment of your life.  Then you tell the vendor "if I do not have an answer in six hours I am walking okaaaay" while clicking your fingers three times in the air.  Like I say, sensible.

Anyway, as you can see my stress really hasn't been caused by anything that serious. Well apart from that poor chap under the train or the potatoes, I hope.  Yet I am in a complete knot.

I am unable to deal with stress these days.  Having never been a particularly loud vocal stress bunny it has taken its toll on me physically with depleted adrenals and a host of other health problems.  Anyway, it has reached a point where stress does leave me feeling physically ill.  I thought the best thing was to have a good cry but I am unable to do that either. 

I remembered one of my Dad's favourite shows "Everybody Loves Raymond" and a particular episode when Raymond's wife Deborah is going through her monthly lady schizophrenia and wants some time to herself.  Ray peeks through the window while, she is having her alone time and sees her crying on the sofa for no reason.  Anyway, she gets extremely cross with him for spying on her but also explains that sometimes crying is good for you and helps you get all your stresses out and it does not have to be about anything in particular.  She suggests he tries it.   He then gives it a go sitting alone on the sofa and cannot squeeze a drop out so instead puts on Lady Marmalade and dances round the living room.  I tried something similar yesterday but it is so inferno-ally hot here at the moment I think my eyeballs are completely dehydrated.  So the sick knot in my stomach remains and I feel in a permanent state of exhaustion.

During these times I find blogging very helpful.  I tend to write in periods of high stress or high happiness.  Obviously as the reader I cannot guarantee which you will get. 

I also find disappearing off to my freaky insane fantasy land tends to calm me down immensely.

The latest one that I have concocted to escape reality is I have won an Oscar for best screenplay and best actress having already scooped best screenplay at the SAGs and Golden Globes but my goodness the best actress Oscar was just a complete shock after all Meryl, Julia and Tilda were in the category too.

I go on to give this hilarious speech which everyone agrees is the funniest acceptance speech ever given and also talk about the fact I spilled pizza sauce down my dress as Ellen was handing out pizza during the show but luckily my dress cost $100.00 as I had it made while on holiday in Vietnam so I don't really care.  I would have felt much worse if I had ruined a borrowed dress from Alexander McQueen, chortle chortle chortle.

Then I go on to press and poke a hole in these so called feminists bemoaning being asked questions about "who are they wearing" tonight.  Look the Oscars are what they are folks, a night of glamorous escapism for the punters at home.  Let us enjoy it.  We don't want to talk about your movie.  We heard all about it in the press junkets and we don't want to know about your politics.  There are other forums for that. It's Oscar night, just twirl around, tell us where your jewellery is from, smile and look nice then go back to campaigning the day after.

Anyway, what an honest Joe I am everyone and suddenly I am on Jimmy Fallon talking about my $100 dress and on Ellen remarking, well I am just so down to earth Ellen and then Graham Norton and whammo bang, just like that I am the new darling of Hollywood, the ingenue de jour even though I am actually a fat grey 47 year old mother of two but hey, that is why I just don't care about all this stuff you know man! 

Yes I am insane.  Only child syndrome.  Lonely childhood etc. 

Anyway, instead of imagining myself making everyone hoot at the Oscars because I left my kids at home because Brad Pitt asked me to be his plus one I have tried to focus on reality and specifically the nonsense my friends have got up to recently which has kept me lifted. 

As I like lists here are a few examples:

1.  My friend, let's called her Mo, honest, doesn't rhyme with her real name, told me a story about how when scooting down to school with her children each morning she tends to eat a raw vegetable on route.  When I say scoot, I should explain that she scoots as well, on an actual scooter. So she was scooting down to school to collect her kids while eating a carrot.  Not a crudite but a whole carrot.  Anyway she took a big bite and a gust of wind ( I can only assume due to the scooting speed) blew the lump of carrot into her throat at which point it got stuck and she started choking.  In her words (sort of)  "I genuinely thought I was going to die because it got so lodged in my throat and all I could think about was this will be so embarrassing if I die choking on a lump of carrot.  It would literally be death by health".

2.  Mo also made me laugh recently when I asked if I could borrow her garlic press as mine had vanished to which she replied, "I would love to lend it to you but I am afraid I broke mine by trying to crush four cloves of garlic in it in one go". 

3.  Mo's dippiness then took me back to my other dear friend.  Let's call her "Whazie".  Again, doesn't rhyme with her real name, who is equally dippy.  She came off her bike very badly years and years ago and hurt herself in a rather unpleasant way.  She was cycling through the rough gravel tracks of Richmond Park and decided as it was very hot she was going to remove her jumper over her head but because she is Whazie and gloriously dippy decided to do this while still pedalling at speed.  As you can imagine she then hit something in the path, flipped off her bike and fell on her arm which got dragged through fox, horse, dog, cat and squirrel poo laced gravel.  Her arm was badly infected and she was in a lot of pain poor thing.  Yet I think one should feel more sorry for us given we had to watch the large clear plaster over her wound fill up with pus over the course of the evening at the pub.

4.  On a recent dinner with our friends Dosie and Dilip (again not their real names) we got onto the subject of colonic irrigation and the benefits, pros, cons and whether we fancy giving it a go to which Dilip replied, "it makes no sense to me, it is like being sick backwards".  This makes no sense to me but had me choking with laughter, not on a carrot I should add.

Anyway, I am trying to focus on these little tid bits which are ambrosia for the soul.  Proper ambrosia not rice pudding and attempting not to get into a knot over things that are unimportant and not worth stressing over.

So, apologies to those of you who stuck this out till the end.  It has been very self-indulgent of me but I needed an outlet.

I went to Pilates this morning and as I sat there trying to get my toe socks on and wondering whether I had grown seven toes as the socks just would not cooperate I heard Kylie Minogue's "I should be so lucky" playing on the wireless.  Singapore local radio playlists are pretty much stuck in 1985 and as I was feeling tired and glum I thought to myself "Yes Kylie, I should be so bloody lucky" and then I remember Mo and Whazie and the fact the kids and I have been watching the new Star Wars movies lately and they think they are brilliant because the actors are all so dreadful so they continually rewind various bits and laugh and laugh and laugh and imitate their terrible acting, particularly the bit at the end when Anakin becomes Darth Vader, goes all Frankenstein's monster and screams "NOOOOOOOO".  Always, a winner.

I also laughed when my little boy was talking about a strawberry and with great emphasis referred to how "juicy" it was.  Again, total paint dry for anyone else but made me giggle immensely.  "Juicy" is just a weird thing for a child to say.

He topped that yesterday while reading a book to me about the oceans and pronounced "scuba" as "scubber diver".  Again, small joys that keep one happy.

So, life is actually fine and I am just going through another one of my many miserable old bat phases.  I will put it down to menopause and leave it at that.

Aotearoa Bonus Features

I like New Zealand.

It's probably fairly obvious that I like the South Island. I think I can honestly say it is the most beautiful place I have ever visited. There are of course many beautiful places in the world but I have never been anywhere so consistently breath taking and magnificent.
 
The other thing I like about New Zealand is irrespective of your age or gender everyone calls you "mate". I was slightly taken aback initially as I associate the term "mate" with men. I then worried that perhaps my face had gone a bit Grizzly Adams given the rest of me had over 17 days of camping and thereby confused vendors as to my gender. 

As it turns out everybody is "mate" and I like that. It is friendly and genial. So officially New Zealanders are the nicest people on earth. Oh along with people from Norway. They are jolly good too.
 
The other interesting thing about some of the nice people of the South Island is most of them are British! I think we exported all our lovely young men and women to Queenstown to work in the outdoor pursuit racket while we imported the lovely young men and women of New Zealand to sit in Graham Nortons red chair to be humiliated and flipped by celebrities. An odd swap, indeed.
 
I was chatting to a nice English guy who worked at a cafe in Queenstown who said he had been in New Zealand six months and has not yet made any kiwi friends but instead, his social circle is full of Brits Americans and Swedes. It's such a buzzy young exciting place and I can see the draw for the bold and the beautiful.

Still it is a shining example of why an anti-immigration policy would be a good thing for New Zealand as who wants ghettos of young middle class Europeans stealing everyone's jobs!

I Hate New Zealand.

There surely cannot be anything one can hate about New Zealand. Well there is and it is very small and I touched on it in an earlier part to this blog. Sand flies. They really are monstrous. There are zillions of these minions of Satan in the South Island with their biggest hangout being Milford Sound.
 
Mosquitoes of course provide itchy bites but they are stealthy and you hardly know you have been their prey until the itching starts. They are sophisticated and sly so you hate them but admire the fact they got you unawares. Well played mosquito. Well played.  Of course here in Singapore some of them carry dengue just to add a bit of frisson to the relationship.
 
Sand flies on the other hand are slow floaty things that hover around you like flying gecko poo and are very easy and satisfying to kill. But while you think you have killed hundreds of them by clapping hands and smashing them on the campervan windows little do you know one has settled on your foot and you feel the sharp bite. Again you can kill them quick at that point but these creeps actually draw blood. And then the infernal itching. My god it wakes you up in the night. It is excruciating and there is nothing you can do as it's just too cold at 2am to be scrabbling around for your bite relief cream.

Lastly, I think it's a good thing when the sentence "look at that great view" comes out of your 5 year olds mouth. It means the holiday worked. He might get beaten up at school for saying something so fruity but it doesn't matter. He has developed an appreciation for the beauty that is nature and the true wonder that can be found in pockets of this glorious planet.

And so end's my Magnum Opus on the South Island.  Given we came back from New Zealand 6 weeks ago, even I am bored writing and reading this blog so you will be pleased to know that this is the last one.  Not forever I am afraid but certainly on Hobbiton.  Over and out.

Aotearoa Part VI

After our amazing four days in the Fiordland National Park we headed back to Queenstown to stay at a well-appointed campsite and shower away the festering mobile stink we as a family had become. 

There is peculiar smell one develops after four days that is well ... peculiar. Not the rancid toe curl of body odour but just something very rotten indeed.

Unfortunately for the population of Queenstown, prior to our settling in at camp and taking that very necessary shower we took the kids to the bird park as my daughter really wanted to see a kiwi up close. 

It's a lovely little place set up by a local man and his family and most of the birds are rescue birds. They do have a successful kiwi breeding program and release them back into the wild in areas with predator control systems in place. They are unusual birds. A lot bigger, than I imagined and their feathers don't look like feathers but more like hair and they scamper about in a funny way so basically look like a toupee grew legs and a beak and walked off. They were lovely to see up close as were all the native birds who are all under threat due to rats, weasels and possums being introduced to New Zealand many moons ago. Luckily these were the animals who were the fascinating road kill we enjoyed on our drives and not the rare and unusual native birds of the island.
 
Anyway after collectively honking out the kiwi house we had our showers and I started packing. It was our last night with our campervan and we had an early start as hubby had booked himself in for a sky dive so we all had to be up and out of the campsite at dawn.
 
The kids and I puttered around town while he did his sky dive and as it got closer to 12 pm and I had not heard from him my daughter was clearly getting worried. She had already asked me if we would cremate him (she needed an explanation as to why Hiccup set Stoic on fire. Sorry if I ruined that for anyone who hasn't seen the sequel) and I explained well Daddy did not make his wishes clear in his will so frankly we can do what we like with him. 

By 12.15 I was also getting a tad worried and walked past the sky dive centre office as I saw the vans were back however no punters. The staff were all smiling so clearly all was well. He turned up 30 minutes later alive so I didn't have to worry about cremations or how I would get the campervan out of those busy narrow roads in Queenstown. Phew.
 
We left Queenstown that evening for Christchurch. A short spectacular flight back over the southern Alps. If you like great views without having to jump out of the plane do that flight. It's stunning.
 
I actually felt really sad leaving behind our campervan. It was like saying goodbye to an old friend. We had a great time with it. Being self-sufficient on the open road was wonderful and I began to dread our last few nights in New Zealand staying in crummy motels. Let's face it no matter now nice the decor and the staff motels just smack of crummy.
 
Anyway as an antidote to the coming car and motel hell I had booked us into a hostel in Christchurch for our one night prior to heading up the north east coastal road to Kaikoura for we hope some great whale watching.
 
The hostel was a former prison and was operative as one as late as 1999. The year I got married, so how apt. It was in a fairly industrial area so not exactly picturesque but then most planners wouldn't build a prison down a nice cul de sac off the cobbled Victorian high street.
 
The hostel itself was called The Jailhouse and it really was fantastic. You stay in the prison rooms, bars on the windows et al and have your food in the communal long hall area outside the many heavy doors that slam shut for the night. The kids loved it. I picked up a pizza from Domino's just down the road where I sat with what seemed like some of the former inmates of the prison when it operated as such and we had a fab dinner at the hostel before using the industrial strength metal toilets and heading to our bunks for lights out.
 
Man criminals have it so flipping easy. Although in fairness they didn't have wifi in the rooms couldn't pop to Domino's and had to go to the toilet where they slept so actually not really that much fun but also not too different from Campervanning! 

Next Week:  Bonus Material

Aotearoa Part V - Fiordland

We began our journey onto the Milford Road at a place called Te Anau two and a half hours from Queenstown and I guess the last town to collect provisions before you enter the wilds of Fiordland where there are no facilities for 170km until you reach Milford Sound.
 
On arrival at our campsite I ditched my family and went to the cinema. This might strike you as odd however our guide book said don't leave Te Anau without seeing a 35 minute film called Shadowlands which is a commentary less movie shot by helicopter over the course of four seasons and provides a glorious view of the Fiordland National Park. All 1.2 million hectares of it. 

The cinema seats 56 in plush wide chairs and you can take booze in there too. It is all very civilized. A short introduction by the guy who sold me my apple cider at the bar mentioned that the cinema was built purely to show this particular movie which was shot by a local helicopter pilot and directed by the cinematographer who did the location scouting for Lord of the Rings. As they blew the budget on the cinema they have now had to extend their offering to a bar as well in order to get more income.
 
The film itself was dazzling and it is easy to believe that the folks who walk the famous Milford Track or head to Doubtful Sound are only covering 2% of the entire national park. 

I am telling you all these dull facts because I want you to know how pleased I am with myself for remembering all that considering I was drunk by the time I left the cinema. I don't drink much anymore and now that my lunches have gone from Singapore fat face stuffing of dim sum or noodles to our old camping and hiking fayre of a ham sandwich and a banana it was hardly surprising I was legless after one drink. Also because my small lunch was burned off on a three hour hike prior to my movie I basically drank wife beater on an empty stomach. Usually my bottle of cider will last two hours but I had to neck it in 30 minutes so I ended up staggering back to our campsite and then cooked dinner for all of us using boiling water, hot oil and knives.
 
We took our time on the morning of our departure from Te Anau as we had waste to empty, petrol to fill, groceries to buy prior to our four days in the basic camps off the Milford Road. Oh and we had to prise the kids off the jumping pillow at the campsite.
 
The earlier sections of the road itself is not the most special we have driven so far and I therefore feel slightly bad for those folks who bomb it in from Queenstown by bus on a seven hour journey just to do the boat cruise on Milford Sound. It just doesn't enable you to take in the majesty of this national park. Still they have their reasons. 

Despite my inebriation the night before I knew the real thrill prior to getting on a boat would be the walks off the Milford road. As we have the kids we couldn't do the epic walks such as Milford, Keppler, or Routeburn which take days but we found some good day hike options on a helpful map from the DOC office in Te Anau.
 
Unfortunately the lady who advised us on the best walks for families with young children assumed our kids were amputees as the first place we stopped on her recommendation was a 100m long boardwalk where you can see some mountains reflected in a very clear and still puddle. Note: don't bother with Mirror Lakes. It's crap and is purely designed to be a dull stop for the long haul bus folk to stretch their legs before they get deep vein thrombosis.
 
We were out of there in about five minutes and instead after a lovely picnic lunch in a beautiful peaceful spot we decided rather foolishly to take on a three hour return hike to a place called Lake Marian. 

All sounded lovely. Gentle ascent to a beautiful lake through alpine forest along a powerful rushing river. 

It took us 3 hours just to get to the sodding lake and admittedly the forest was absolutely beautiful but it was raining, muddy as hell, slippery and incredibly long and we had two young children in tow. 

However after all the struggling and complaining up to the top (and the kids really did do very well as it was not easy at all) we reached the lake. I think I expected just a lake and that was it but I forgot where we were and we had basically climbed up a mountain. Surrounding this beautiful glacial lake were the snow-capped peaks of Fiordland mountains and I mean the peaks. Not just the mountains but the peaks with snow at eye level and waterfalls spilling out of the sides. It was glorious. And even though it was 6pm and we had a three hour hike back we knew it was worth it.
 

What made me giggle most was my cocksure daughter adopting all the unworthy confidence of Sir Edmund Hillary at the start of his descent from Everest. While my youngest decided this beautiful quiet scenic spot required a poo and my husband was shooing sand flies and I was holding open the door so he had some light in his porta potty I heard and saw my seven year old talking to an older gentleman who looked like he has been hiking his whole life. That composed confident but humble manner of a proper walker. Not those people who wear all the top gear and carry two poles which they over use when walking. Oooh that drives me nuts. Bloody over pollers. 

Anyway, I heard her tell him "the view is fantastic. It's really worth it". Further down on our return she told a couple of ladies who were heading up late in the day that it was worth it too in her poshest voice while rolling her eyes. I decided her smugness needed a bit of a dressing down and told those ladies that she is being a smug bug now and wasn't so chuffed with herself when she was whinging the whole way up for three hours.
 
The whinging was one thing but the endless questions drove me crazy. I do like talking to my children and I find them mildly interesting and know full well in a few years they won't talk to me at all but believe me three hours of asking me who I liked best out of her, her brother and Daddy was enough to make me want to lock myself in the porta potty and let the sand flies take me down.  Furthermore, because she is a dipstick she cannot walk and talk at the same time so slowed down every time she tried to get me to answer this stupid question. Given it was 7pm I was in no mood for chit chat so told her I despise you all equally and I like myself the best.
 
Anyway we made camp around 8pm and the setting was exquisite. Heads hit pillows at 10.30pm and out like a light. Little do the kids know we have another three hour summit hike tomorrow planned. We will tell them the usual lie of it's just a short walk like we did today and see how they get on now that all their outer wear is soaking and their boots are sodden.


Next Week:  Queenstown to Christchurch to Kaikoura